That's not to say they were released this year, but any I watched for the first time this year. Here we go:
A.I: Artificial Intelligence
dir. Steven Spielberg
I watched this on recommendation from the excellent Wittertainment team at 5 Live, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo. They interviewed Spielberg on the show and Mark apologised for giving it a bad review when first released, saying he now considers it his 'enduring masterpiece'.
Thus, I came to this fascinating, heartbreaking film.Conceived by Stanley Kubrick and finally made after his death, A.I bears the marks of both its creators. The distanced, chilly precision of Kubrick's camera blends with the instantly familiar style of Spielberg to create a truly enthralling film.
David is a robot, a 'mecha' in the film's language, the first ever robot boy created to truly love a human. But will a human ever love him? To his human 'mother', he is at first a replacement and later, when her biological son is returned to her, a danger. To his brother, he is a toy. To the mecha-fearing humans, a hate figure. And to his creator, he is merely an achievement. The movie is this but so much more. So many questions are raised and none answered, and there are a great many tearjerking moments. Fans of genuinely interesting, provocative sci-fi must watch this truly underrated Spielberg film.
Silver Linings Playbook
dir. David O. Russell
A silly romcom, is what I expected, a throwaway movie with throwaway characters. But I was intrigued by the title and the acclaim it was receiving, so I watched it. With growing surprise I found myself not only enjoying the film, but really loving it.
In general it is just a romcom, albeit one with an edge, but in the details there can be found wonderful performances, unconventional humour and a refreshingly real heart. A heart that's strong enough to ask the audience to accept a romance without the obligatory sex scene. There are some truly funny moments here, like the diner scene, Jennifer Lawrence unexpectedly joining Bradley Cooper's jog, and most of De Niro's scenes. I'm also grateful to this movie for showing us that Robert De Niro can still act when he wants to.
The performances are fine indeed, and with David O. Russell's careful direction, this film is just great really. Lovely stuff.
Cloud Atlas
dir. The Wachowskis
Magnificent! After a torrent of reviews calling it everything from a failure, to boring to a disappointment, I expected little. But I simply cannot understand this. Cloud Atlas is truly magnificent. Gripping from open to close, it is a bold, intelligent and adventurous picture that never compromises its values for the sake of excitement and explosions.
And what are these exactly? It seems to celebrate freedom, intelligence, honesty, love and storytelling itself. Across 6 storylines and 7 time frames that go from historical epic, to drama, to thriller, to comedy, to sci fi, the movie weaves a web of connections and coincidences that illustrate the similar challenges and emotions that humanity always has and always will face.
Lost In Translation
dir. Sopfia Coppola
When one hears the phrase 'adult movie', one thinks of (not porn) lots of swearing, violence, nudity and perhaps hard drug use. I would describe Lost In Translation as an adult movie, but for exactly the opposite reason to the above. To say that it has two lead characters, dissatisfied in their respective relationships, away from home and both clearly attracted to the other for whatever reasons, the least we would expect of a lesser movie is a regretted sex scene. If not that, then a passionate declaration of love perhaps, and a tearful explanation of why they can't be together.
But Sofia Coppola treats her audience as adults who understand that for these characters, this just isn't the right story. They are adrift geographically and metaphorically, lonely and isolated in a city full of strangers. They connect with one another, and not in a lazy Hollywood way but truthfully, through the sharing of silences and awkward situations. They share a bed one night, but they simply lie there next to each other.
There are indeed many moments where sex is there, hovering outside the door as a plausible and perhaps even expected possibility. But instead they take something else from their week together, and when they leave perhaps their lives will be better for having met.
The ending is sheer perfection. What words do they share in their final goodbye? We do not hear, but they have earned their privacy, they deserve it. And as adults, we should respect that.
Synecdoche, New York
dir. Charlie Kaufmann
Nobody can accurately describe this movie in any profitable sense, one can only give fleeting impressions of the different aspects that make up a deeply moving, unsettling and confusing whole. Totally bewildering would not be an unfair way to describe Synecdoche, New York.
Philip Seymour Hoffman (my favourite actor, so definitely a good start) is a middle aged stage director, who is falling away from his wife, his health and his confidence. So many things happen I genuinely don't know how to convey the essence of this film. It can be found in incredible surreal passages where a woman buys a house which is always on fire, and only decades later dies of smoke inhalation, or where Caden (our protagonist) realises he never noticed the tattoo on his wife's back, or where in order to achieve complete truth in his play, he hires first an actor to play himself, then an actor to play the actor playing himself, and later an actor to play the actor playing the actor playing himself.
These isolated moments still don't convey what this film is about. Charlie Kaufmann has said that he wanted to create a horror film about things people are really afraid of. Like growing old, becoming ill, making nothing of oneself, the horrific and remorseless march of time. There are moments where Caden seems to wake up mid conversation to realise that years, or even decades have passed without his noticing. When his wife takes herself and their child to live in another country, the child accidently leaves behind her diary. But as the years pass, Caden reads the diary to discover his daughter writing about her forgetting her father and discovering who she is without him.
He wants to put on a play simulating life in New York, and to do so buys an impossibly huge warehouse, creating another city within it, one that has yet another warehouse inside it. Caden grows elderly and still the play still isn't finished, but that never seemed to be the point.
Truly, this film is mesmerising. Only after watching it several times can one begin to understand the depth of its greatness. Or indeed, understand it at all.
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